Britain’s SAS Gets “Man-Stopper” Rounds for Fight Against Terrorists

According to dailystar.co.uk, “SAS: Special forces soldiers are going to play a role in domestic counter-terrorism.” So, like the French and unlike Americans, the Brits have no compunctions about deploying military troops inside the country. Hey, if you’re already sliding down the slippery slope to a police state, that’s how you roll. And to take on this new mission, the SAS are loading-up with what the Star calls super-special deadly “Man-Stopper” rounds . . .

Special soft-nose bullets designed to drop Jihadis on the spot will be issued to the crack force in the next few weeks. The bullets, described as the most lethal ever made, are manufactured by a Swiss arms company which makes ammunition for the special forces. One of bullets “hyper-expands” and has a devastating effect on a human body by causing a massive hole and almost instant death . . .

One source said that a single expanding round will blow a human head to pieces.

Another bullet being issued to the crack unit is designed to break up or fragment on impact also causing serious wounds to the victim. The bullet is designed not to pass through a body and so lessen the risk of innocent civilians being killed or injured. The senior defence source said: “These bullets are designed to drop a terrorist where he stands.

“You want a bullet which will give you an instant kill when you are up against someone wearing a suicide vest. You need one round one kill and at close quarters and the best ammunition is a soft nose bullet. The bullet opens up when it hits a target so all of the energy passed directly into a terrorist. Most bullets will go clean through a body at close range but these ones don’t. It’s not pretty but its very effective.”

This is a story because the Brits signed – and previously strictly adhered to – article IV,3 of the Hague Convention of 1899: Declaration concerning the Prohibition of the Use of Bullets which can Easily Expand or Change their Form inside the Human Body such as Bullets with a Hard Covering which does not Completely Cover the Core, or containing Indentations.

[Note: the U.S. did not sign Article IV but still refrains from using hollow-point ammo in combat.]

Now that the UK is in the EU, I wonder if any peaceniks will take the Brits to the European Court of Human Rights for issuing the SAS with the same “blow your head off” ammunition found in American civilians’ guns (void where prohibited by law). If so, Her Majesty’s Government will no doubt claim it’s OK because the hollow-point rounds are for the SAS’s domestic anti-terrorism efforts – which aren’t military operations. Unless it’s convenient to call them such.

Meanwhile, there’s more cool ammo for the SAS!

It is understood that the SAS are also to be issued with state-of-the-art “silent ammunition” – known as whisper rounds.

Unlike normal ammunition the bullets travel at subsonic speeds and are only lethal up to ranges of 100m but they are virtually silent when fired.

The “whisper” ammo means that troops using them do not have to use silencers – which can effect a weapon’s accuracy.

Wait. What? Anyway, it looks like the SAS is getting up to date, even if the anti-gun UK media doesn’t have a clue. The more worrying aspect: British troops walking the streets. Again. Hey, did you know that the Brits quartered troops in London apartment buildings to man anti-aircraft missiles during the London Olympics? And you thought the Third Amendment was an anachronism.

Two weeks ago I was deer hunting with my 7mm Rem. Mag. I gave a doe a Texas brain shot (first time I have taken a shot like that) she still ran 100 yards before collapsing. She had a broken left shoulder, a baseball sized chunk of lung left and a hole I the heart. The ammo was Winchester ballistic silver tips. I doubt there ammo is better then that stuff. The bullet still exited too.

I like the article talking about making a headshot more deadly. I mean a rifle bullet with a clear head shot is pretty likely to stop somebody. The issue is making a head shot on the target. It’s hard enough to do without worrying about civilians thrown into the mix.

Your bullets didn’t stop them. It did definitely kill them, and well done there. Stopping something is different than radically slowing them down though and that’s what those pedants among us who speak of bullets not stopping anything are getting at. To stop something in motion is a whole different matter because it not just affects their intentions (what those that speak of machine gun effectiveness against soft targets are getting at) but specifically it speaks to their actual motion. If you were to actually “stop” someone, they wouldn’t fall. They’d simply become absolutely motionless instantaneously to the observer and their intentions would thence be irrelevant. Bullets don’t stop people, they slow the hell out of them occasionally and change their directions frequently but they do not stop them.

I’d bet that 240 would have been more effective with expanding projectiles in the mix though.

So, the SAS is Britain’s most elite fighting force. If the Daily Star is going to use a term like “man-stopper rounds,” shouldn’t they also be asking what the heck were the SAS was using before? “Man-slower-downer rounds?” “That-will-leave-a-mark rounds?” “They-make-a-big-bang-that’s-really-scary rounds?”

The paper cartridges for the new Enfield rifled musket had a beeswax lubricant in them. The soldier was supposed to bite one end of the cartridge open and load from there. Rumor circulated amongst the local troops that pig and beef fat were used in the cartridges. Unclean. Helped spark the Sepy Mutiny.

The .455 hollow base bullets I referred to were for the many variants of the .455 Webley service revolvers. A self contained cartridge that used a soft lead hollow based bullet similar to a minie ball. In an attempt to get more stopping power some of the bullets were loaded in the cases backwards. Leaving a huge hollow point projectile.

In early factory loadings the .455 Webley looks a bit weak on paper, 250-ish grain projectile and only high 600s FPS.

That said, like a .45ACP, it’s a big honkin’ pill. From the history I remember, Webley ran double-pressure proof rounds through their guns on a regular basis, and the Webley guys I’ve met reload them up pretty aggressively. Alternatively, I believe you can mill the cylinder for half-moons, and run .45ACP +P without issues.

There are some spectacular battlefield cartridge fails out there, but I don’t recall reading any that blamed the .455 Webley for being wimpy.

Wow, sure are loads and loads of silliness in this. Mind, they are telling all the UK proles that this is what SOF will be using in and around London, should the need arise (which, presumably, it has).

Seems like they really are out to do some serious reassuring to the great unwashed now huh?

I wonder how many of them over there are looking across the pond longingly at the second amendment? Not many of them will admit to such you know, some will but not all of them.

Let’s get this straight. There is no constitutional prohibition of using military assets in US domestic law enforcement. It is a legislative prohibition growing out of Reconstruction. The Third Amendment is a prohibition of the military seizing or quartering i. your property in peacetime without your consent or without compensation in wartime.

While using the standing military for internal security isn’t prohibited by the Constitution, it’s generally not the American way. One of the reasons why we had a tiny regular, Federal army until the Mexican War was fear of the military overthrowing the Republic, like what almost happened towards the end of the Revolution.

A fear of governmental power and restraining the government’s main weapon is not a bad thing.

Indeed. I’ve got some subsonic rounds form my 9mm, but they still make a lot of noise. I would love to get my hands on something in the Aguila Colibri-noise class, but with the efficacy of a hollow point centerfire.

There is actually such a thing as rounds that are effectively silenced without a need of a silencer, but I doubt they were talking about that. Basically, the idea is to prevent the gases from ever escaping by trapping them inside the case. So the case has a piston between the powder and the bullet, which transfers energy to the bullet as the powder is burning, but is arrested at the very end of the case such that it seals them. The bullet keeps on flying, while the case gets ejected with the gases still trapped.

Naturally, this system is very limiting in efficiency. For one thing, the bullet is only accelerated very briefly (you can make the case longer to counter that, but ultimately it needs to be short enough to extract). For another, you need a thick-walled case so that it doesn’t rupture when extracted. So it’s useless for rifles (not much sense there anyway, since a good can suppress almost as well, with much better terminal ballistics), and really only useful for ultra-concealable “spy guns” and the like.

The only real-world weapons that use this principle that I know of are both Russian: PSS pistol and OTs-38 revolver – both using special 7.62×42 ammo. The muzzle energy is comparable to weak .32 ACP loads.

Well we all know that discussing such things in the presence of anti-2A types WILL make their heads want to explode. I suspect that only their extreme hard-headedness and the available empty space to absorb the pressure inside are the only things that save them from this horrible fate.

It wasn’t the quantity of StG-44 that was the problem for Germans, it was the timing. They did produce them in fairly large numbers – over 400,000 is nothing to sneeze at – but by the time they could produce them in such quantities, the war was already lost, with Soviets on a steady offence after Kursk, and Western Allies in France and Italy.

I’m too lazy to look it up, but I’m pretty sure the UK is very wary of mixing civil and military on their streets (barring Northern Ireland’s history). I don’t believe the SAS or any military units can patrol overtly or covertly without prime minister approval of handover of control from civil to military. During a siege, the SAS will be tooled up, on site and ready to roll…but will stay put until that handover is given, and technically during that time civil power is in the hands of the military. Whether British SCO19 police units get the same ammo is probably more of a point (and they probably won’t) but “SAS” sounds way cooler.

Being a Brit who has an interest in shooting I have read the UK press for years and have never ONCE read a believable article on a gun related matter. Much the same goes for TV News over here. The UK media are absolutely cretinous on this subject and completely unreliable. The article you sight here is just “par for the course”. I think it’s a combination of disdain and fear.

IS distributes copies to its troops in the form of a comic book so they have something to chuckle about in their after-murder parties. It is widely used as a handbook to teach the most effective techniques to kill infidels who think you can write a treaty to conduct a “civilized” war. Great hilarity ensues.

Ummmmm, deploying of military troops inside the US isn’t prohibited by the constitution. In fact historically it isn’t even that rare. It happens all the time with things like disaster relief efforts and other such states of emergency. Even armed military intervention happens for things like riot control, and while I don’t agree that such a thing should happen I suppose I wouldn’t be complaining if it stopped a city from burning because people decided it was a good day to loot and torch everything. Too situational to apply absolutes.

The SAS aren’t exactly going to be patrolling the streets. There just aren’t enough of them and their time is too valuable for that sort of thing. If they are set up as a reactionary force to respond to events as quickly as they can it makes sense. They will simply have the same problem that all other such forces have, response time. As to them being military instead of a police force… Were I someone in a bad situation who has been rescued by another individual, well lets just say that about the last thing I am worried about is the patch on his shoulder.

Separation between military and law enforcement is a practical need in a nation. The two operate under very different mindsets and crossing them can be dangerous. That being said, a terrorist attack is much closer to a military situation to begin with so maybe it is a “right tool for the job” sort of situation.

I just had a mental image of NYPD cops trying to stop an active shooter situation with multiple hostiles and a lot of hostages…. 14% hit rate and a whole bunch of bystanders…. I’ll take the SF guys thank you.

Umm, a distinction needs to be made between the US Army, a federal organization, and the National Guard, which is nominally a State based organization under the command of the state Governor that may be (and often is) called into national service. The Governor is the one who calls out the Guard in the event of a natural disaster, not the President. The Guard is what used to be called the organized militia.

If you consider their target audience, it all reads as a validating point. “Why we took your guns away”.. those super duper, man hunting super secret bullets designed only for humans who turned to the darkside, are shot from objects that are beyond your sphere of understanding…. The poor common Brit is destined to believe every fairy tale told to them when it comes to guns.

I couldn’t help but notice there were many shots of SAS in the video carrying M4’s and M16’s. Must be that whole European bull pup movement didn’t work out so well in the UK if the SAS seems to prefer a Eugene Stoner rifle/carbine.

It’s not an anti-bullpup thing, it’s an anti-SA80 thing. Everyone knows it’s still a turd, even after all the numerous attempts to fix it. At best, it is no longer a disaster, but it’s still a heavy, unreliable, not particularly ergonomic weapon. For their army, the Brits stick to it because of that whole national pride thing more than anything, and it “works” well enough. But for special units for whom a weapon malfunction is literally death, and ergonomics are important because milliseconds count, they go look for something better. And for their kinds of operations, ARs are actually near perfect – light, ergonomic, easily customizable for different missions, and not particularly expensive.

The SAS is a no-shit tier 1 fighting force. They have the training and the mindset, they can carry what they damn well please. What the Dailymail either doesn’t know or doesn’t care to know is that 95% of the equipment they carry is available off the shelf here in these United States.

So…you can tool up to kill people inside your own borders (including your own citizens) in the most viciously effective way imaginable, but you darn well better be nice to those foreign enemies. Got it.